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Political Will for Peace

INITIAL CONTACTS WITH PARTIES DISAPOINTING
The first few of the campaign's contacts with the main British parties have proved disappointing and resulted in only tentative support. Most peace loving people would agree that our politicians should stop arguing among themselves and take positive steps to start resolving some of the world's problems. Such issues as arms limitation, reducing spending on defence, world poverty & third world debt are not sufficiently discussed. Certainly agreement on how to resolve such problems are rare. One of the problems is that all politicians regardless of party are somewhat parochial. Of necessity they have to look inwards and give priority to our own country's problems because of the need to get re-elected within a 4-5 year period. However in a world of decreasing size due to the advent of technical communications, what happens in the rest of the world invariably has an effect, sooner or later on the population of the UK.

STRENGTHEN UNITED NATIONS PEACE KEEPING
The Liberal Democrats who have not had the responsibility of national Government for many years have increasingly concentrated their attentions on local community issues. However it is this party who come closest to appreciating the importance of the roll of the United Nations. It strongly believes this organisation should be strengthened with a greater emphasis on building & training for its important peace keeping role. Evidence of the need for a stronger U.N. Peace keeping force emerged when difficulties were found obtaining sufficient personnel to police the border between Israel & Lebanon.
This will only come about if more countries accept their responsibilities by paying their due contributions and offering their support to ensure that the U.N. becomes the credible power for peace that the world so greatly needs.

BRITAIN SPENDING BILLIONS ON "DEFENCE"
That far less money should be poured down the funnel of armaments, bombs & adding to our Nuclear Defence stockpile, surely has the support of well over 50% of the voting public. Unfortunately this is not reflected in Parliament where only a small proportion of MPs give this priority. Billions of Pounds are spent by Britain alone on their so called "Defence Budget" and the U.S.A. spends Billions more! During the cold war this could conceivably have been justified but this is no longer the case.
More MPs of all parties should be crying NO MORE to our taxes being spent on warfare and a greater level of our wealth being spent on solving the world's problems and the causes of warfare and negotiated peace settlements.

DEALING WITH TERRORISM
Of course no one has yet devised a solution to combat worldwide terrorism. Few of us even understand their objectives. It is surely time for these terrorists to explain to a largely peace loving world exactly what is their problem. The civilized governments of the world & the U.N. should make every effort to listen in an attempt to prevent such problems before they cause massive loss of life. What exactly did the terrorists responsible for the terrible September 11th massacre in the United States or our own July 24th Transport massacre actually hope to achieve. They were surely not taking these actions simply because they are evil murderers?

UNITING BRITAIN
Moves by the previous Prime Minister Tony Blair to attempt to reconcile British people regardless of race are to be welcomed. This is something we can all do to help. The vast majority of British Muslims are loyal to our Queen, Government and laws. It is a very small fraction of extremists who are the trouble makers behind our security problems. Now that the government are finally aware of this internal security problem it is right that these criminals be weeded out and prosecuted to the extent of the law. But it is that vast God fearing majority community of ethnic residents that we should all be making a greater effort to reach. The same applies of course to those people. A little friendly courtesy when in contact with citizens of a different race or creed could help considerably to resolve a growing feeling of unrest.

Regrettably, Britain's new Prime Minister David Cameron makes no such contribution towards peace. Following his recent trip to several Arabian countries accompanied by a team arms salesmen it is doubtful whether the thought of attempting to help attempt World Peace ever crossed his mind. It is dissapointing to see that for all the Lib Dems' efforts to limit the excesses of the Tory government little has so far been achieved despite broken promises.